Middelklassen er ikke det, der springer i øjnene i de fleste afrikanske lande. Størstedelen af befolkningerne er fattige, en del er ekstremt fattige og enkelte er meget rige. Men der er altså også en spirende middelklasse.
Ideen er at kombinere fotojournalistik og akademisk arbejde. Den franske fotojournalist Joan Bardeletti, der er idémanden til projektet, har siden 2008 rejst rundt i Afrika for at skildre middelklasserne i blandt andet Kenya, Elfenbenskysten og Mozambique.
Samtidig er en række akademikere fra de tre lande og Frankrig i færd med at undersøge fænomenet “afrikansk middelklasse”.
Africa Knows er titlen på et projekt, der forsøger at re-brande Afrika ved hjælp af billeder. Det bliver udtrykt således:
Our Purpose: To tell a different story about Africa. The Re-branding of Africa.
The story everyone knows and yet no one knows. Africa Knows is about the challenges, triumphs, dreams and nightmares of being an African in a 21st century city that is straddling several revolutions at the same time – the technological revolution, the agricultural revolution, a democratic resurgence and a post-colonial identity crisis complicated by old ethnic tensions.
Billederne viser steder, begivenheder og folk i almindelige situationer og kan opfattes som en hyldest til både det smukke og unikke og det helt almindelige hverdagsliv.
Udsnit af forsiden på Africa Knows
Bag projektet står Sheila Ochugboju og Joshua Wanyama. De er begyndt med billeder fra Kenya med har planer om at brede sig ud til resten af Afrika med tiden.
I følge avisen The East African vil den rwandiske hovedstad Kigali omkring marts være dækket af en trådløst netværk.
Kigali will soon go wireless after the government launched a $7.66 million wireless broadband (WiBro) facility that is set to make it the first “hot spot” capital city in Africa.
Korea Telecom clinched the $7.66 million deal in 2007 from the Rwandan government to build an infrastructure for the WiBro technology-based network.
The facility, whose infrastructure been under construction for the past two years, will go commercial in three months.
The wireless Internet facility was built by Korea Telecom, South Korea’s largest fixed-line telephone operator and second-largest mobile carrier.
I november 2009 begyndte arbejdet med at skabe det første kort over Kibera, der er en af Nairobis slumområder. Muligvis er Kibera endda Afrikas største slumområde.
Slumbyerne er ofte der, hvor tilflyttere fra landet begynder deres tilværelse som storbyboere, for der er få eller ingen byggereglementer og der bliver sikkert heller ikke krævet skatter op. Kan man finde en ubebygget plet og nogle byggematerialer, så kan man bygge et hus og føje sig til det flertal af Jordens indbyggere, der bor i byer.
Netop denne bevægelse – fra land til by – er massiv i mange afrikanske lande. Slumbyerne vokser altså hele tiden og derfor er der sjældent overblik over hvor mange der bor i dem.
Slumbyer er uformelle byer. Det betyder at der ofte ikke foregår den store planlægning og at infrastrukturen derfor er mere mangelfuld end den er i de formelle byer.
Den manglende planlægning betyder også, at der kke findes nogle ordentlige kort over disse slumbyer. Men det har en gruppe kortlægnings-aktivister altså nu rådet bod på i Kibera.
Kort over Nairobi, hvor Kibera blot er en “hvid plet”. Kortudsnittet er fra OpenStreetMap.
Det er gruppen OpenStreetMap, der står bag initiativet. På MapKibera.org kan man blandt andet læse følgende:
Kibera is the largest slum in Africa, situated in Nairobi, Kenya. Many UN agencies, including UN-HABITAT, US Government agencies such as USAID, and NGOs, like Carolina for Kibera, have presence nearby in Nairobi, and as a result, Kibera is one of the most well known, researched, and serviced slums anywhere. Despite this focus, Kibera remains literally a blank spot on the map, its patterns of traffic, scarce water resources, limited medial facilities, etc. remain invisible to the outside world, and residents themselves. Without basic knowledge of the geography of Kibera it is impossible to have an informed discussion on how to improve the lives of residents of Kibera.
Videointerview med en af kortlæggerne, Douglas Namale, der blandt andet forklarer, hvorfor det er vigtigt at få skabt et kort over Kibera.
Se en præsentation af MapKibera på SlideShare og flere videoer på YouTube.
I bydelen Kitintale i Ugandas hovedstad Kampala ligger der en skaterpark. Den er bygget i efteråret 2006 af medlemmerne af Uganda Skateboard Union med håndkraft. Forløberen var en enkelt rampe, der blev bygget i vinteren 2005.
Til at begynde med rådede medlemmerne kun over to skateboards, som de havde fået af et stormagasin i byen. Sikkerhedsudstyr manglede de også.
De eksperimenterede med at bygge deres egne boards og lave sikkerhedsudstyr af blade, som de bandt om knæene og albuerne.
Senere har foreningen fået donationer fra skaterlegenden Tony Hawks fond og Christian Skaters (ja, sådan nogle findes der altså), så nu har medlemmerne en del flere boards og andet udstyr at gøre godt med.
I skrivende stund er det seneste nyt, at en af parkens ramper, half pipe’en, er gået i stykker og for at få midler til at genopbygge den søger foreningen støtte fra offentligheden.
Den nigerianske miljøaktivist Newton Chukwukadibia Jibunoh er på trapperne med et reality show til nigeriansk tv med fokus på global opvarmning. Showet hedder Desert Warriors og på dets websted beskrives det således:
The 50 selected participants will be invited to become contestants on The Endurance Reality show in Agadez, Niger. They will join the Nigerian ambassador to Niger Republic, and will work with officials of the Republic of Niger’s Ministry of Environment on various greening projects, community services and endurance exercises.
While in Agadez, the participants will be put through various endurance exercises, physical fitness challenges, discipline tests, social comportment and driving skills tests. The challenges will be filmed and later transmitted on LTV, Silverbird TV and TVC in Lagos. The show will also air on various TV stations in Niger to show how the participants are faring. During the show, viewers will be able to vote via sms on which of the contestants they would like to eliminate or keep. The final decision on whom to be eliminated will be made by a panel of judges.
Eventually, the remaining 15 contestants will become official Desert Warriors and will set off on an Expedition. During the expedition, the participants will drive from Nigeria to the United Kingdom across the Sahara desert by road. The Desert Warriors will also receive prizes including a Suzuki jeep as well as monetary awards. All 15 Desert warriors will become Lagos state Environment ambassadors and will be honoured at a ceremony in London.
Ifølge organisationen Uganda Land Alliance er der grund til bekymring over den ugandiske regerings salg og udlejning af landbrugsjord til rigere lande og firmaer.
Dette er ikke kun et problem i Uganda, men også i flere andre afrikanske lande. Problemet er, at afgrøderne fra den udlejede landbrugsjord for det meste bliver sendt ud af landet og derfor ikke hjælper de lokale meget. Jorden er ofte heller ikke bare noget, der har ligget ubrugt hen og derfor uden problemer kan lejes ud. Ofte er den eller dele af den opdyrket af subsistensbønder, der ikke har papir på jorden. Den mulighed mister de naturligvis, hvis jorden bliver lejet ud til udenlandske firmaer.
Uganda Land Alliance skriver blandt andet:
The government of Uganda is said to have leased 840, 127 Ha of land in various parts of the country to the private sector in Egypt to grow wheat, produce organic beef and rice for export to Egypt. This acreage represents about 2.2% of Uganda’s total land mass; and
In 2006, President Museveni is said to have provided Chinese investors with 10,000 acres (4, 046 Ha) of land in Uganda, which is being utilized by 400 Chinese farmers using imported Chinese seeds of corn and rice. The project is overseen by Liu Jianun, a former Chinese government official and now head of the China-Africa Business Council.
Et blogindlæg på Africa Rising – “Images of Africa” – problematiserer brugen af billeder i vestlige organisationers kampagner for hjælp til Afrika. Det hedder blandt andet:
When I say the word “Africa” what do you picture? Chances are you see in your mind the image of a young, dark child, shirtless and with a swollen belly, with big eyes looking up at you in need. In some cases, you might even see flies crawling on the child’s face. This is an image that is used time and again to portray Africa in appeals made by nonprofit organizations.
[...]
When a Western charity makes an appeal for funds with the photo of a seemingly helpless African child, the Western donor is cast in the role of the strong, generous, and righteous person helping the lowly and needy. Strength, generosity, and righteousness are all good things, but I fear that an unrighteous pattern has developed. The West and Africa have become type-cast into strong and weak, resourceful and helpless, giver and receiver, parent and child.
Det er ikke noget nyt at problematisere denne billedbrug, men dette indlæg gør det på en kort og præcis måde.
Er Afrika klar til science fiction, spørger den amerikansk/nigerianske forfatterinde Nnedi Okorafor i et gæsteindlæg på Nebula Awards ‘ netsted. Nebula Awards er science fictionens svar på Oscar Awards.
Det mener hun, hvilket vel er naturligt nok, eftersom hun selv skriver science fiction. Men hun refererer til en samtale hun har haft med den nigerianske filmmand Tchidi Chikere, som ikke er enig med hende. Han siger blandt andet:
“I don t think we’re ready in the primary sense of the word,” Chikere said. “We can hide it in other categories like magic realism, allegory, etc, but we’re not ready for pure science fiction.”
“Science fiction films from the West are failures here. Even Star Wars!” he said. “The themes aren’t taken seriously. Science fiction will come here when it is relevant to the people of Africa. Right now, Africans are bothered about issues of bad leadership, the food crisis in East Africa, refugees in the Congo, militants here in Nigeria. Africans are bothered about food, roads, electricity, water wars, famine, etc, not spacecrafts and spaceships. Only stories that explore these everyday realities are considered relevant to us for now.”
Hun fortsætter selv:
In my observation, in Africa, science fiction is still perceived as not being real literature. It is not serious writing. As Chikere said, African audiences don’t feel that science fiction is really concerned with what’s real, what’s present. It’s not tangible. It’s sport. Child’s play. I can see how science fiction can be foreign to many Africans. Technology tends to play a different role on the continent. There is a weird divide and connection between the technologically advanced and the ancient. For example: People will have cells phones in rural villages yet have no plumbing or electricity or one will opt to buy a laptop instead of a desktop computer because a laptop has its own power supply, most useful for when “NEPA takes the lights”.
Nnedi Okorafor is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy author of Nigerian descent. Her novels include Zahrah the Windseeker (winner of the 2008 Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature) and The Shadow Speaker (An NAACP Image Award Nominee). Her forthcoming novels Who Fears Death (from DAW) and Akata Witch (from Penguin) are scheduled for release in 2010. Her Disney Fairies chapter book, Iridessa and the Fire-Bellied Dragon Frog (Disney Press), is scheduled for release in 2010. She holds a PhD in literature and is a professor of creative writing at Chicago State University.
